While Lamborghini owners can count on teams

of elite repairmen to arrive at a moment’s notice,

those with hypercars from truly boutique manufac-

turers must rely almost entirely on the skills and

resources of just one small shop. The brands may

be obscure, but their cult followings attest to their

brilliance—and the prestige of owning their pre-

cious creations.�H.E.

64

T

here’s no rule that says you’ve got to be a great

driver to own a supercar. Oftentimes, quite the

opposite is true. Witness the chronicle of crashes

on wreckedexotics.com, the TMZ stories breath-

lessly divulging which celebrity ride got mangled

in L.A. traffic, or the cover of the New York Post blaring news of

Tracy Morgan’s Bugatti bang-up in Midtown Manhattan in June.

But for the lucky few who do own such high-powered

machines, the considerations that go into preserving their

car from dings and dents are myriad. And they’re not, unfor-

tunately, limited to perfecting their own driving skills. Just ask

Kris Singh. In 2016 the Miami-based investor was hit while

driving his $3 million Pagani Huayra down Collins Avenue.

The culprit? An Uber driver.

“It sounded like a slap, and then I started spinning,” says

Singh, whose 720,000 Instagram followers get eyefuls of

his collection of million-dollar supercars from Koenigsegg,

Lamborghini, Ferrari, and McLaren. “He ran a stoplight

during rush hour, and I was the unlucky person he hit,” Singh

says. “I thought I’d blown a tire, but when I looked back, the

whole wheel was hanging off the car. If I’d got hit any harder

and hopped the curb, people could have died.”

Singh’s first phone call, once he stepped gingerly out of

the Huayra, was to Pagani’s publicist. “I gave him a heads-up

that this was probably going to be in the news tomorrow,” he

says. “Then I asked for a truck.”

People who own supercars tend to have all the money in

the world, but getting the cars fixed after a serious accident

is a thorny procedure even for them. A small handful of tech-

nicians tend to be authorized to work on these outrageously

complex and sensitive vehicles. If an unqualified monkey

wrench tinkers with a supercar, a brand will be reluctant to

take on further responsibility fixing it up.

Fast-forward five months, and Singh was reunited with the

car in Italy, where it had been transported by air for weeks

of rebuilding and fresh calibrations. Pagani engineers con-

ducted X-ray scans for hairline fractures in the chassis and

made completely new components to replace those damaged

in the wreck. Aestheticians matched the clear coating on the

carbon fiber of the exterior and polished it to an impecca-

ble sheen. (Singh’s insurance policy covered the cost of the

repairs; he declines to specify the total amount but says the

incident did not increase his monthly premium.) He’s since

put thousands more miles on the Huayra, driving it in rallies

in Europe, Asia, and South America. “I still drive that car lit-

erally every day,” he says. “It’s solid.”

As a small, family-owned automaker that produces about

30 cars a year, Pagani has a reputation for providing hands-on

care and upkeep for its vehicles, many of them owned by

close friends of its founder, Horacio, and his son, Christopher.

But more prolific carmakers make big commitments to per-

sonal attention, too. The sales program for the sold-out

$2.3 million Aston Martin Vulcan went so far as to include

a repair and maintenance clause for all customers, promis-

ing that the original technicians and engineers who built the

cars would conduct any necessary work. Aston Martin will

either operate services at the special operations facility near

its headquarters in Gaydon, England, flying cars back from

where the incident took place, or provide a mobile fix-it ser-

vice if the customerfinds that more convenient. “Of course,

each repair is dealt with on a case-by-case basis dependent

on the level of damage,” a representative says.

Brands are notoriously squeamish about divulging just how

much repairs cost for something so rare and powerful, and

the owner might not even report it to the insurance company.

The most dramatic vehicular disaster protocol may very

well be Lamborghini’s. The Italian brand deploys a team of

Boeing-trained specialists to rescue and redeem cars from VIP

owners the world over. Known collectively as “the flying doc-

tors,” they descend on any damaged Aventador, say, desecrated

not to the point of total loss, and tend to it on-site. (China and

CARS Bloomberg Pursuits October 7, 2019

“It sounded like a

slap, and then

I started spinning”

Small-Batch

Supercars SCUDERIA

CAMERON

GLICKENHAUS

The 8-year-old New

York brand makes

$2 million Le Mans-

style race cars, plus

the $275,000 SCG 005

Baja Race Boot. This

650-horsepower truck

can compete in Mexico’s

historic Baja 1000 rally.

HENNESSEY

PERFORMANCE

A tuner since 1991

for sports cars made

by other compa-

nies, Texas-based

Hennessey created

the 1,244-horsepower

Venom GT under its

own banner in 2011 and

the 1,600-horsepower

Venom F5 in 2019.

RIMAC

AUTOMOBILI

The Croatian manu-

facturer makes elec-

tric hypercars such as

the 258 mph C Two.

It also provides elec-

tric motor technology

for other automakers,

including Koenigsegg

and Jaguar.

GORDON

MURRAY DESIGN

Famed for design-

ing the revered

McLaren F1, Murray

is now building a car

under his own epony-

mous line, the three-

seat, $2.5 million T.50.

Deliveries are set

for 2022.